Recently, I've taken up a new "hobby" of sorts. This was no doubt spawned by the recent release of the Les Miserables movie. My family and I have seen this play before and love it, so when news of a movie came out, my sister was thrilled. She would watch every Youtube video released by the producers, and her excitement would grow. For Christmas, my sister received the soundtrack for this movie and would listen to it in the car. I don't want to get into my opinion of the new movie or its soundtrack, but the music quickly got stuck in my head. We eventually saw the movie as well.

During some lighthearted discussion with my sister afterwards, I suggested that Les Miserables would be a much better movie/play if more characters were bears. This produced an alternate universe of sorts in which Fantine was not left by her man-friend, but rather he was eaten by a bear, Cosette was a bear, and instead of Javert committing suicide (in the movie at least) by falling into the water, he dies by falling into a churning river of bears. The list goes on.

From here, my sister and I would exchange messages replacing words in Les Miserables songs with the word "bear". This is primarily done by myself, but I digress. Marius was now Bearius and Javert, Ja-bear. I must admit that I had way more fun with this than I probably should have. I would take entire songs, replacing key words with "bear" and send them to my sister. I sent such beloved favorites such as "I Dreamed a Bear", "In My Bear", and "One Bear More".

If you think about it, this idea could be applied to most forms of media. Any other play would certainly improve with the addition of a few bears here and there, and the same goes for movie and book plots. Imagine a world where "The Phantom of the Op-bear-a" is the story of a disfigured bear who teaches a young singer "The Music of the Bear." It brings a tear of joy to the eye.

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